The present invention relates to a system and a method for auditing the use of prescribed materials, such as drugs, medications, and narcotics, in hospitals and other medical care facilities.
The advent of computers has increased the ability of medical facilities, such as hospitals, doctor's offices, and pharmacies, to track various materials which they routinely dispense to patients/customers. The patent literature is replete with various systems capable of being used by these facilities for a variety of different purposes. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,766,542 to Pilarczyk illustrates a system and software for pharmaceutical prescription compliance. The system is intended to contact customers of a pharmacy automatically to remind them that their prescriptions need to be refilled. The system uses a computer, memory, and automatic telephone dialing and voice synthesizing equipment. Information concerning each customer and his or her prescription is placed in a database in the memory. A schedule file which lists customer name, phone number, the drug prescribed and refill due date is created from this information. The schedule file is kept in chronological order by refill due date. At selected times, customers whose prescriptions are due to be refilled within selected time periods are automatically contacted by the computer using the automatic telephone dialer. When the telephone is answered, the voice synthesizer identifies the customer by name, the prescribed drug and prescription number. The system generates various reports for the pharmacist concerning its automatic activities.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,072,383 to Brimm et al. relates to a hospital information system which includes a plurality of terminals having display means and data entry means. Patient information is entered into the system via the terminals, is organized hierarchically in the system, and may be displayed to users having proper access to the system. The system provides a time-oriented task list, which is automatically generated from data which has been entered from physician and nursing orders. Tasks may be chartered by a system user directly onto a system form, and the task list and any associated form(s) are automatically updated.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,299,121 to Brill et al. relates to a non-prescription drug medication screening system. The system is intended for use in pharmacies and uses customer inputs to assist the customer with the selection of an appropriate non-prescription medication to relieve symptoms of an illness, injury or the like. The system uses an expert system to perform the selection. The system also uses a personal computer with a keyboard, monitor and disk drive as input/output devices with appropriate programming for prompting a user to input information which is used by a knowledge base to determine non-prescription medications which may be purchased by the customer to relieve symptoms of injuries and illnesses covered by the knowledge base. The system operates by prompting a user to input basic customer information. After the basic customer information has been. inputted, the customer is prompted to select one main symptom category from a list displayed and the choice made results in the appropriate knowledge base being loaded for the next step. The logic of the loaded knowledge base itself determines which questions are asked of the customer by the display of appropriate questions on the monitor. The output of each knowledge base on the completion of the questions and answers is a list of component medications recommended for use with the symptoms described. The list of component medications generated by the execution of the knowledge base is used to search a database to find the appropriate product to be recommended.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,327,341 to Whalen et al. is directed to a computerized file maintenance system for managing medical records including narrative reports. The file maintenance system processes multiple files of a client/patient type, the files having record sets in an organizational structure combining a plurality of standard, categorical, field-defined records with identified text fields of fixed character length with a plurality of hybrid categorical, extended-field records of virtually unlimited character length with means for editing entered text without reentry of previously entered data in the extended field.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,420,786 to Felthauser et al. describes a method of estimating product distribution. In this method, sales activity of a product at sales outlets including sales outlets at which sales activity data is sampled and unsampled sales outlets is estimated by determining the distances between each of the sampled sales outlets and each of the unsampled sales outlets and correlating sales activity data from the sampled sales outlets according to the determined distances. The sales activity volume of the product at the plurality of sampled outlets and the estimated sales activity volume of the product at the unsampled outlets are combined to obtain an estimate of sales activity for all the sales outlets. Sales activity of products prescribed by a physician at both the sampled and unsampled outlets can be estimated by correlating sales activity data for the prescribing physician at the sampled outlets according to the distances between the sampled outlets and the unsampled outlets.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,732,401 to Conway illustrates a system for tracking costs of medical procedures by monitoring the movements of personnel, supplies and equipment and processing data on these movements to produce detailed and accurate cost accounting records associated with the particular services rendered. Transponder tags are associated with each person and object for which costs are to be tracked. The detected movements of the tags are combined with scheduling, procedure and cost information to build detailed records of activities and the costs thereof in a manner permitting a wide variety of statistical and other analyses.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,737,539 to Edelson et al. illustrates a prescription creation system for use by professional prescribers at the point of care. The system has a prescription division subsystem permitting creation of a single prescription to be automatically divided into two components for fulfillment of one portion quickly and locally at higher cost and of another portion by remote mail order taking more time but providing a cost saving for a major part of the prescription. The prescription creation system has an ability to access remote source databases for system presentation to the prescriber of relevant, authorized and current drug, drug formulary and patient history information, with dynamic creation of a transient virtual patient record.
In recent years, hospitals and medical facilities have become quite concerned about the unauthorized use/withdrawal of drugs, particularly narcotics, and are demanding systems which allow them to account for such drugs. Hospitals and HMOs have also become concerned about medical practitioners who overprescribe and overutilize expensive and dangerous drugs. To date, the computerized systems in existence have not allowed hospitals and HMOs to gather the information that they need to address these concerns.